The Tommyknockers, Page 43

  "Got any ideas?"

  "I might," he said slyly. "Time'll tell, won't it?"

  "It always does, Gooey," she said. "Always does."

  The Reverend Goohringer in fact had a fine idea about those bells--he could hardly believe it had never occurred to him before, it was so simple and beautiful. And the best thing about it was that he wouldn't have to take it up with the deacons, or with the Ladies' Aid (an organization which apparently attracted only two types of women--fat slobs with boobs the size of barrels and skinny-assed, flat-chested sluts like Pamela Sargent, with her fake ivory cigarette holder and her raspy smoker's cough), or with the few well-to-do members of his congregation... going to them always gave him a week's worth of acid indigestion. He did not like to beg. No, this was something the Rev. Lester Goohringer could do all by himself, and so he did it. Fuck 'em all if they couldn't take a joke.

  "And if you ever call me Gooey again, Pam," he had whispered as he rewired the fuse box in the church basement so it could handle the heavy voltage his idea would require, "I'll jam the plumber's friend in the parsonage pissoir up your twat and plunge out your brains ... if you haven't pissed 'em all away."

  He cackled and went on rewiring. Rev. Lester Goohringer had never had such blunt thoughts or said such blunt things in his life, and he found the experience liberating and exhilarating. He was, in fact, prepared to tell anyone in Haven who didn't like his new carillon that they could take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.

  But everyone in town had thought the change nothing short of magnificent. It was, too. And today the Rev. Goohringer felt a real heart swell of pride as he flicked the new switch in the vestry and the sound of the bells floated out over Haven, playing a medley of hymns. The carillon was programmable, and today Lester Goohringer plugged in the hymns which had been particular favorites of Ruth's. They included such old Methodist and Baptist standbys as "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" and

  "This Is My Father's World."

  The Rev. Goohringer stood back, rubbing his hands together, and watched as people began to move toward the church in groups and twos and threes, drawn by the bells, the bells, the calling of the bells.

  "Hot damn!" the Rev. Goohringer exclaimed. He had never felt better in his life, and he meant to send Ruth McCausland off in style. He intended to preach one pie-cutter of a eulogy.

  After all, they had all loved her.

  4

  The bells.

  Dave Rutledge, Haven's oldest citizen, tipped an ear toward them and smiled toothlessly--even if the bells had jangled discordantly he would have smiled, because he could hear them. Until early July, Dave had been almost completely deaf, and his lower limbs were always cold as his circulation steadily failed. He was, after all, ninety, and that made him an old dog. But this month, his hearing and circulation had magically improved. People told him he looked ten years younger, and by Christ, he felt twenty years younger. And my, wasn't the sound of those bells playing just the sweetest thing? Dave got up and started toward the church.

  5

  The calling of the bells.

  In January, the aide U.S. Representative Brennan had sent to Haven had been in D.C., and there he had met a beautiful young woman named Annabelle. This summer she had come to Maine to be with him, and had come to Haven with him this morning to keep him company. He had promised her they would overnight in Bar Harbor before going back to Augusta. At first she thought it had been a bad idea, because she began to feel a little nauseated in the restaurant and hadn't been able to finish her breakfast. For one thing, the short-order cook looked like an older, fatter version of Charles Manson. He kept smiling the strangest little smile when he thought no one was looking--it was enough to make you wonder if he had powdered the scrambled eggs with arsenic. But the sound of the bells chiming hymns she hadn't heard since her Nebraska childhood charmed her with wonder.

  "My God, Marty, how can a little wide-place-in-the-road town like this afford a gorgeous carillon like that?"

  "Maybe some rich summer tourist died and left it to them," Marty said vaguely. He had no interest in the carillon. He'd had a headache ever since they got here, and was getting worse. Also, one of his gums was bleeding. Pyorrhea ran in his family; he hoped to God it wasn't that. "Come on, let's go over to the church." So we can get it done and go up to Bar Harbor and screw our brains out, he thought. This is one creepy little town.

  They started across the street together, she in a black suit (but, she had told him archly on their way up, her underwear was all white silk ... what little of it there was), he in a governmental charcoal gray. The people of Haven, dressed in their soberest finery, walked with them. Marty saw a surprising number of powder-blue state police uniforms.

  "Look, Marty! The clock!"

  She was pointing at the tower of the town hall. It was good solid red brick, but for a moment it seemed to swim and waver before Marty's eyes. His headache was instantly worse. Maybe it was eyestrain. He'd had a checkup three months ago and the guy had said his vision was good enough to fly a jet, but maybe he'd been wrong. Half the professional people in America were on coke these days. He had read all about it in Time ... and why was his mind wandering like this, anyway? It was the bells. They seemed to be echoing and multiplying in his head. Ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million, all playing "When We Meet at Jesus' Feet."

  "What about the clock?" he asked irritably.

  "The hands are funny," she said. "They look almost ... drawn on."

  6

  The calling of the bells.

  Eddie Stampnell of the Derry barracks crossed the street with Andy Rideout from Orono--both of them had known Ruth, liked her.

  "Pretty, ain't it?" Eddie asked dubiously.

  "Maybe," Andy said. "I just keep thinking of Bent and Jingles getting blown away by a couple of numbnut rubes out here, probably buried in some farmer's potato field, and it just sounds like a bone-phone to me. Seems like Haven's bad luck now. I know that's stupid, but that's how I feel."

  "It's bad luck for my head," Eddie replied. "It aches like a bastard."

  "Well, let's get it over and get out," Andy said. "She was a good woman, but she's gone. And between you and me, I don't care if I never spend another fifteen minutes in Haven now that she is."

  They stepped into the Methodist church together, neither of them looking at Rev. Lester Goohringer, who stood beside the switch which controlled his lovely carillon, smiling and rubbing his dry hands together and accepting the compliments of all and sundry.

  7

  The crying of the bells.

  Bobbi Anderson got out of her blue Chevrolet truck, slamming the door, smoothing her dark blue dress over her hips, and checking her makeup in the truck's outside mirror before walking slowly down the sidewalk to the church. She walked with her head down and her shoulders slumped. She was trying hard to get the rest she needed to go on, and Gard had helped to put a brake on her obsession

  (and that's what it is, an obsession, no use kidding yourself)

  but Gard was a brake that was slowly wearing out. He wasn't at the funeral because he was sleeping off a monumental drunk, his grizzled, worn face pillowed on one arm, his breath a sour cloud around him. Anderson was tired, all right, but it was more than just that--a great unfocused grief seemed to fill her this morning. It was partly for Ruth, partly for David Brown, partly for the whole town. Yet mostly, she suspected, it was for herself. The "becoming" continued--for everyone in Haven except Gard, that was--and it was good, but she mourned her own unique identity, which was now fading like a morning mist. She knew now that The Buffalo Soldiers was her last book... and the irony was that she now suspected the Tommyknockers had written most of that, as well.

  8

  The bells, bells, bells.

  Haven answered them. It was Act I of a charade titled The Burial of Ruth McCausland, or, How We Loved That Woman. Nancy Voss had closed the post office to come. The government would not have approved, but what the government didn't know wouldn't
hurt them. They would know plenty soon enough, she thought. They would get a big old express-mail delivery from Haven very soon. Them and every other government on this flying mudball.

  Frank Spruce, Haven's biggest dairy farmer, answered the bells. John Mumphry, whose father had run against Ruth for the position of town constable, answered them. Ashley Ruvall, who had passed her out by the town line two days before her death, answered them with his parents. Ashley was crying. Doc Warwick was there, and Jud Tarkington; Adley McKeen came with Hazel McCready on his arm; Newt Berringer and Dick Allison answered them, walking slowly and supporting Ruth's predecessor, John Harley, between them. John was feeble and nearly transparent. Maggie, his wife, was not well enough to attend.

  They came, answering the summons of the bells--Tremains and Thurlows, Applegates and Goldmans, Duplisseys and Archinbourgs. Good Maine people, you would have said, drawn from a healthy stockpot that was mostly French, Irish, Scots, and Canadian. But they were different now; as they drew together at the church, so did their minds draw together and become one mind, watching the outsiders, listening for the slightest wrong note in their thoughts... they came together, they listened, and the bells rang in their strange blood.

  9

  Ev Hillman sat up behind the wheel of the Cherokee, eyes opening wide at the dim sound of the carillon. "What in the hell--"

  "Churchbells, what else?" Butch Dugan said. "It sounds very pretty. They're getting ready to start the funeral, I suppose." They're burying Ruth over in the village ... what in God's name am I doing out here by the town line with this crazy old man?

  He wasn't sure, but it was too late to change his course now.

  "The bells in the Methodist church never made a sound like that before in my time," Ev said. "Someone's changed them over."

  "So what?"

  "So nothing. So everything. I dunno. Come on, Trooper Dugan." He turned the key, and the Cherokee's engine roared.

  "I'll ask you again," Dugan said with what he thought was extraordinary patience. "What are we looking for?"

  "I don't rightly know." The Cherokee passed the town-line marker. They had left Albion now and entered Haven. Ev had a sudden sickening premonition that in spite of all his precautions and care, he was never going to leave it again. "We'll know it when we see it."

  Dugan didn't reply, only held on for dear life and wondered again how he had gotten into this--he had to be as crazy as the old fart he was riding with, and then some. He raised one hand to his forehead and began rubbing, just above the eyebrows.

  A headache was forming there.

  10

  There were sniffles, red eyes, and some sobbing as the Rev. Goohringer, his bald head gleaming mellowly and in a soft variety of colors courtesy of the summer sunshine falling through the stained-glass windows, launched into his funeral eulogy following a hymn, a prayer, another hymn, a reading of Ruth's favorite Scripture (the Beatitudes), and yet another hymn. Below him, foaming around the lectern in a semicircle, were great bunches of summer flowers. Even with the upper windows of the church thrown open and a good breeze blowing through, their smell was suffocatingly sweet.

  "We have come here to praise Ruth McCausland and to celebrate her passing," Goohringer began.

  The townsfolk sat with hands either folded or gripping handkerchiefs; their eyes--most wet--regarded Goohringer with sober, studious attention. They looked healthy, these folk--their color was good, their skin for the most part unblemished. And even someone who had never been in Haven before could have seen that the congregation here fell naturally into two groups. The outsiders didn't look healthy. They were pale. Their eyes were dazed. Twice during the eulogy, people left hurriedly, dashed around the corner of the church, and were quietly sick. For others, the nausea was a lower complaint--an uneasy rolling in the bowels not quite serious enough to cause an exit but simply going on and on.

  Several outsiders would lose teeth before that day was over.

  Several developed headaches which would dissolve almost as soon as they left town--the aspirin finally working, they would surmise.

  And more than a few of them had the most amazing ideas as they sat on the hard pews and listened to Goohringer preach Ruth McCausland's eulogy. In some cases these ideas came so suddenly and seemed so huge, so fundamental, that the persons to whom they occurred would feel as if they had been shot in the head. Such persons had to fight down an urge to bolt out of their pews and run into the street screaming "Eureka!" at full volume.

  The people of Haven saw this happening and were amused. All of a sudden the apathetic, puddinglike expression on someone's face would be shocked away. The eyes would widen, the mouth flop open, and the Havenites would recognize the expression of a person in the throes of a Grand Idea.

  Eddie Stampnell of the Derry barracks, for instance, conceived of a nationwide police band on which every cop in the land could communicate. And he saw how a cloak could easily be thrown over such a band; all those nosy civilians with their police-band radios would be shit out of luck. Ramifications and modifications poured into his mind faster than he could deal with them; if ideas had been water, he would have drowned. I'm gonna be famous for this, he thought feverishly. Rev. Goohringer was forgotten; Andy Rideout, his partner, was forgotten; his dislike of this goofy little town was forgotten; Ruth was forgotten. The idea had swallowed his mind. I'm gonna be famous, and I'm gonna revolutionize policework in America... maybe in the whole world., Holy shit! Hoooly SHIT!

  The Havenites, who knew Eddie's great idea would be foggy by noon and gone by three, smiled and listened and waited. Waited for it to be over, so they could get back to their real business.

  So they could get back to "becoming."

  11

  They rolled down a dirt track--Town Road # 5 in Albion, which became Fire Road # 16 here in Haven. Twice logging roads branched off into the woods, and each time one of these came up, Dugan braced himself for an even more bone-wrenching ride. But Hillman didn't take either. He reached Route 9 and swung right. He cranked the Cherokee up to fifty and headed deeper into Haven.

  Dugan was skittery. He didn't know exactly why. The old man was crazy, of course; the idea that Haven had turned into a nest of snakes was pure paranoia. All the same, Monster felt a steady, pulsing nervousness growing inside him. It was vague, a low grassfire in his nerves.

  "You keep rubbing your forehead," Hillman said.

  "I've got a headache."

  "It'd ache a lot worse if the wind wasn't blowin, I guess."

  Another lapse into utter nonsense. What in God's name was he doing here? And why did he feel so goddam jumpy?

  "I feel like somebody slipped me a couple of sleeping pills."

  "Ayuh."

  Dugan looked at him. "But you don't feel that way, do you? You're as cool as a goddam cucumber."

  "I'm scared, but I don't have the jitters, and I don't have a headache, neither."

  "Why would you have a headache?" Dugan asked crossly. The conversation had gotten decidedly Alice in Wonderland-ish. "Headaches aren't catching."

  "If you and six other guys are painting a closed room, you are all apt to end up with headaches. Ain't that a true fact?"

  "Yeah, I guess so. But this isn't--"

  "No. It ain't. And we got lucky with the weather. Just the same, I guess that thing is putting out a powerful stink, because you feel it. I can see you do." Hillman paused and then said another Alice in Wonderland thing.

  "Had any good ideas yet, Trooper?"

  "What do you mean?"

  Hillman nodded, satisfied. "Good. If you do, tell me. I got something in that sack for you."

  "This is crazy," Dugan said. His voice wasn't quite steady. "I mean, utterly nuts. Turn this thing around, Hillman. I want to go back."

  Ev suddenly focused a single phrase in his mind, as sharply and as clearly as he could. He knew from his last three days in Haven that Bryant, Marie, Hilly, and David were routinely reading each other's minds. He could sense it even though he co
uldn't pick it up. By the same token, he had come to realize they couldn't get into his head unless he let them. He had begun to wonder if it had something to do with the steel in his skull, a souvenir of that German grenade. He had seen the potato-masher with dreadful, ineluctable clarity, a gray-black thing spinning in the snow. He'd thought, Well, I'm dead. That's it for me. After, he remembered nothing until he'd awakened in a French hospital. He remembered how his head had hurt; he remembered the nurse who had kissed him, and how her breath had smelled like anise, and how she kept saying, shaping her words as if speaking to a very small child, "Je t'aime, mon amour. La guerre est fini. Je t'aime. Je t'aime les Etats-Unis."

  La guerre est fini, he thought now. La guerre est fini.

  "What is it?" he asked Dugan sharply.

  "What do you m--"

  Ev swerved the Cherokee over to the side of the road, kicking up a spume of dust. They were a mile and a half over the town line now; it was another three or four miles to the old Garrick farm.

  "Don't think, don't talk, just tell me what I was thinkin!"

  "Tout fini, you're thinking la guerre est fini, but you're crazy, people can't read minds, they c--"

  Dugan stopped. He turned his head slowly and stared at Ev. Ev could hear the tendons in the man's neck creak. His eyes were huge.

  "La guerre est fini, " he whispered. "That's what you were thinking, and that she smelled like licorice--"

  "Anise," Ev said, and smiled. Her thighs had been white, her cunt so tight.

  "--and I saw a grenade in the snow, oh Jesus, what's going on?"

  Ev pictured a red old-fashioned tractor in his mind.

  "What now?"

  "Tractor," Dugan husked. "Farmall. But you got the wrong tires on it. My dad had a Farmall. Those are Dixie Field-Boss tires. They wouldn't fit a Far--"

  Dugan suddenly turned around, grappled for the Cherokee's door handle, leaned out, and threw up.

  12

  "Ruth once asked me if I would read the Beatitudes at her funeral if it should fall to me to preside over it," the Rev. Goohringer was saying in a mellow Methodist voice the Rev. Donald Hartley would have completely approved of, "and I have honored her wishes. Yet--"